


The Only Fun in Town

by tigrrmilk



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas fun, M/M, local paper AU, poor decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 21:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5390141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus scoffs, but he tries to soften it with a smile. He’s not sure it works -- Sirius looks more alarmed than anything. “Go on then,” Remus says. “Tell us why you’re here. Why do you want to be a journalist? You can’t need the money.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Fun in Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liseuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liseuse/gifts).



> thanks to [morgan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/M_Leigh/pseuds/M_Leigh) for beta-reading!!
> 
> written from some remus/sirius small gifts prompts from liseuse -- i hope you like it.

 

I had a story, oh I hope I haven't told it yet, and...  
**aztec camera - just like gold**

**\---**

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I still can’t believe you’re leaving,” Remus says, without looking up from his typewriter. “And at Christmas too. You heartless bastard.”  
  
“It’s not Christmas,” Lily says.  
  
“It will be,” Remus says, darkly, as he strikes a word from his article. He’d misread his shorthand again. “And I’ll be here, alone, and it’ll be horrible.”  
  
Lily puts a hand on his shoulder before she leaves. She’s wearing gloves. He looks up, startled, one hand still on the typewriter. “Bye,” she says. “Try not to kill the new boy.”  
  
Remus groans, with real feeling.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“I don’t know why I have to train the new kid,” Remus had said.  
  
“It’s because he’s got a car,” Peter had said, before James -- head of the newsdesk at the weekends and whenever else nobody important is in, and in permanent need of a haircut -- could shut him up. Remus had bristled. He’d started working at the paper straight out of school, when he’d been taking lessons and -- well. When he’d never passed the test in the end they hadn’t cared.  
  
“Well, fuck you too,” he’d said.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“So,” he says, to the new boy. It’s late November, and Remus can’t hide that he’s got a cold, and he’s furious because the new boy is everything that Lily had sworn he wouldn’t be. His suit fits him. He has a fountain pen. He sounds like Laurence Olivier. He’s beautiful, in a very aristocratic kind of way, if you like that sort of thing. Which Remus doesn’t.  
  
Remus has given him his favourite typewriter, because it actually works, and he doesn’t want to have to spend half of his life explaining how to stop the keys from sticking. This means, of course, that it’s half seven in the evening, everybody sane has gone home, and Remus is still at his desk, trying to make the _e_ on his new typewriter work.  
  
“I can give you a lift home,” the new boy -- Sirius -- says, every night of his first week. Remus takes the bus, or, if he’s feeling particularly awake (which is rarely), walks home. Sometimes he deigns to accept a lift from James, but James is usually there well into the evening, and Remus refuses to stay past half seven unless the Queen has died (or possibly Thatcher, if only so he can pour champagne over all of the desks).  
  
Remus says no to the offer of a lift every time, and Sirius finally stops asking.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“I’ll hate him,” he’d said to Lily, as he tried to lean away from her cigarette, smoke billowing out in every direction. It was October, and she’d just handed in her notice.  
  
“Why would you assume that,” she’d said. Remus hadn’t answered; they’d both known.  
  
There were two reasons: he wasn’t Lily, and he was being sent to the paper by the fucking _Telegraph_.  
  
“Look,” Lily had said. “He’s a journalist, he’s hardly in it for the money and glory. Take him under your wing. Do that thing you do.”  
  
Remus had glowered. The problem was -- the problem _was_ that Lily had found a fancy new job as a travel writer, James was quickly on his way to becoming a deputy editor, Peter was -- well, Peter could at least _drive_ , so he got given stories that Remus wanted, and did a passable job at them -- and the rest of the office was twenty years older and treated him like he was little more than a child.  
  
“I bet you hated _me_ when I started,” Lily had said. Because she had been young -- younger than Remus, by a whole year -- and she could write, and she was from London. Or something. But he hadn’t hated her _then_.  
  
“I hate you _now_ ,” he’d told her. “But I’ll probably still hate him more.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“So how much training did they give you,” Remus says, on Sirius’s first morning.  
  
Sirius blinks. “That’s what I’m here for.”  
  
“Nothing,” Remus says. He tries to keep the despair from his voice. Sirius’s tie looks weird. Is it a cravat? Is that what a cravat looks like? “Tell me you’ve used a typewriter before.”  
  
“I wrote for Isis,” Sirius says. When Remus doesn’t respond he says, “When I was at Oxford.”  
  
“Goody for you,” Remus says. “Is that a no?”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Remus takes Sirius on the whole sodding reporter tour of Sheffield. He takes him on a job to the police station. He takes him on a job to talk to a shopkeeper who was robbed at knifepoint. He even takes him to a local council meeting, although he’s sure he won’t be able to palm _that_ whole routine off on him.  
  
Sirius stares at Remus as he fills a notebook with shorthand, and doesn’t say anything.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“So where did you go?” Sirius asks. It’s four days before Christmas. Remus is trying not to care about Christmas, because he’s working the newsdesk all afternoon, when normal people are meant to be with their families and all that. There’s flaky green tinsel pinned to the corners of the room, and a wreath of fairy lights above the door.  
  
“I went to the shop for milk,” Remus says. “It wasn’t even my turn to go to the shop for milk.” He doesn’t look up from his typewriter.  
  
“No,” Sirius says. “Did you go to Sheffield?”  
  
“What? University?” Remus says. “Mate, my highest qualification is my pass in the shorthand exam. Which _you_ will not get if you spend all of your time talking. Even if you do have a sodding degree.”  
  
It’s that that does it, apparently. The next morning, James takes Remus aside and hisses, “He’s _trying_ to make friends!”.  
  
“Of course he is,” Remus says. James and Sirius have already started co-ordinating their mid-morning coffee-breaks. Peter tried that with Remus, once, and Remus stopped taking coffee-breaks in retaliation.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Sirius doesn’t smoke. Remus notices this because almost everyone else in the office does. Every now and then, though, Sirius says yes to the offer of one, tucks it behind his ear, and immediately seems to forget about it.  
  
His handwriting is very fancy and loopy and Remus takes a very small amount of satisfaction in the knowledge that once he’s mastered shorthand it will be as shit as everybody else’s.  
  
On Christmas Eve, they all leave the office at five and Sirius says, “Let’s all have a fucking drink.”  
  
The swearing sounds put-on, strained, but he’s rich and Remus can’t really face going back to his flat. It’s not even the evening yet but it’s dark, and cold, and hasn’t even had the decency to snow yet this year.  
  
At least that means he’s not spending his days ringing all the schools in Sheffield to find out which ones are closed so he can write an anonymous column complaining about it.  
  
Sirius gets the first round in. He’s drinking gin. Remus goes for brown ale. James gets the second round, and Sirius says, “I’ll have the same as him,” when Remus nods at his glass to say, another one.  
  
Remus is drifting in and out of various conversations. It’s all so -- loud. He looks up at the ceiling. It’s a weird old pub -- lots of brown wood, frosted windows. He looks back down to see Sirius at his side, staring into his drink. “How long are you here for?” Flitwick says, leaning across the table. “At the paper, I mean.”  
  
“Six months,” Sirius says. “Provided I’m competent by then.”  
  
Remus scoffs, but he tries to soften it with a smile. He’s not sure it works -- Sirius looks more alarmed than anything. “Go on then,” Remus says. “Tell us why you’re here. Why do you want to be a journalist? You can’t need the money.”  
  
He’s three pints in, and he’s a lightweight, or even _he_ wouldn’t have brought up money. “I wrote a long piece for one of the mags when I was in Oxford,” Sirius says, and Remus is ready to hate him all over again. “Worked on it with my cousin, Andy. Couldn’t use her name. She’s a junior fellow at Hilda’s.” He pauses for a while, then starts drawing a big shape on the scratched wooden table with his finger. “There’s this college, Oriel. Still doesn’t admit women. They were going to have a vote on it in the SCR, and we’d heard whispers from all over about how nasty it was getting.”  
  
“Yeah?” Remus says.  
  
“She did most of the work,” Sirius says. “But I edited it, and of course we had to use my name...”  
  
“So you got a job on the strength of your cousin’s work?” Remus says.  
  
“No,” Sirius says. “Bad faith, Remus,” he says, and knocks him lightly on the arm. “Aren’t there songs people sing about that at Christmas.”  
  
“How would I know,” Remus says. “I’m a heathen.”  
  
“I liked helping her investigate,” Sirius says. “I got to go undercover at an Oriel Ball. Queerest night of my life.”  
  
Remus balls one of his hands into a fist but he doesn’t -- he can’t. Of course that’s how he speaks, he thinks, furiously.  
  
“I think I was confusing God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen with the saying ‘O ye of little faith,’” Sirius says, thoughtfully.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Sirius tries to get Remus to share a taxi home -- “Look, James told me where you live, and it’s on the fucking way, you won’t even have to—” but Remus refuses. It’s a cold night, and it snows for precisely half-an-hour of Remus’s walk home, which means that it stops five minutes before midnight.  
  
None of it settles, not even a little bit.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“Tell me about everyone,” Sirius had said, his first afternoon. Remus had sighed, but he’d done his best to oblige.  
  
“Peter really wants to join the sports desk,” Remus said, “but they think he’s a bit wet. They send him to cover the away games nobody wants to do.”  
  
Sirius had grinned. “You’ve met James,” Remus said. “Resolutely a good sort, so we all hate him. Gets to assign stories when none of the editors are free so try not to piss him off unless you love door-to-doors.  
  
“Flitwick -- he’s been here longer than you’ve been alive, probably, but won’t throw his weight around unless you’re rude to him first. Filch -- he’s shit at headlines but he’s ruthless at cutting copy down to the required length even if you think it fucks your sentences up, so do your best not to go over. Shacklebolt -- deputy editor, so everything I said for James goes double. Aberforth -- he’s a freelance photographer, not actually sure why he’s at a desk, but he’s related to Albus -- the editor, he’s the one who shook your hand earlier without introducing himself -- so try not to be too weirded out by the smell.”  
  
“What about you?” Sirius asked.  
  
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Remus had said. “Anyway, it’s almost three and this story you’re rewriting for me _still doesn’t make any sense_.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“No, no.” Remus can’t count the number of times he’s said this to Sirius -- hell, he’s said it to Peter, too, and he had to go through it with Lily, early on. “You can’t start the article like that.”  
  
“Why not?” Sirius says.  
  
“It’s _news_ , it’s not a feature,” Remus says. He scrubs at his hair. “If you start it like that, nobody’ll read it. You’ve got to start with the facts -- the important facts -- and then you flesh it out. Later on. And _no long words_.”  
  
“But --” Sirius says.  
  
“You’re not building suspense,” Remus says. “It’s not Corrie.” When Sirius doesn’t immediately reply, he says, “Corrie’s a soap. Do they even have telly in Oxford?” and Sirius throws a pen -- ballpoint, chewed-up -- at his head.  
  
“And I thought you’d never learn,” Remus says. It misses him, but only narrowly.  
  
The funny thing is, Remus thinks, that it’s probably completely different at the Telegraph. Their pages are as big as tablecloths. The journalists there probably all know Latin.  
  
But he’s not got to worry about the Telegraph; he’s just got to worry about his own fucking paper, which comes out in the evening, and if it has one thing going for it -- two things going for it -- at least Tories don’t buy it, and at least it fits under your arm comfortably.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Remus gets to work at one on Christmas day, ready to man the newsdesk until evening. There’s no paper on Christmas -- it’s like an extra Sunday -- and the office is so empty that it’s almost eerie.  
  
“What the fuck are you doing here,” he says. Sirius is at the desk. He’s wearing a bright red jumper over a shirt and one of his cravats.  
  
It’s the first time Remus has seen him not wearing a suit.  
  
“You’re wearing jeans,” Sirius says, slightly gleeful.  
  
“Yeah, well,” Remus says. “At least James isn’t here to send me out on a job, _like I thought he might be_.”  
  
“James wanted to see his parents,” Sirius says. “Told me I’d probably just need to answer the phone, and that I should call the police every now and then to see if anything’s burnt down.”  
  
Remus can’t really argue with it. “Well, I’m here to relieve you,” he says, but Sirius doesn’t get up when he sits down. He yawns and looks at the clock as he picks up the phone. “Guess I’d better do the rounds,” he says.  
  
Sirius watches him for a minute -- it’s unnerving, although Remus isn’t sure why -- and then he gets up and lopes away in the direction of the kitchen. Remus hangs up after playing a game of sadness one-upmanship with the poor sod at the police station and yells, “Sirius, you can go home now.”  
  
Sirius emerges from the kitchen a while later with a bottle of whisky and a big lump of tinfoil that he unwraps to reveal some sandwiches. “Turkey,” he says, and he prods Remus until he takes one. Remus eyes the whisky, but he doesn’t mention it until the sandwiches are both gone.  
  
It’s a good sandwich. Turkey and stuffing and something green and no cranberry sauce to ruin it.  
  
“Probably best not to drink in the office,” he says, and nods at it. “You never know when Albus is going to emerge from his office.”  
  
“He’s not here,” Sirius says.  
  
“He sleeps in there sometimes,” Remus says. “At weird times, I mean. Not just during board meetings.”  
  
Sirius pours a generous dram of whisky in both their mugs and then hides the bottle under the table. “There,” he says. Remus shakes his head.  
  
“You’re driving home,” he says. He looks at Sirius, who doesn’t disagree. He pours Sirius’s mug of whisky and lukewarm coffee into his own. “Be responsible, Sirius.”  
  
It’s disgusting -- supermarket whisky, and instant coffee -- but it somehow manages to improve Remus’s mood. “You know you can go home,” he says to Sirius, again, but Sirius shakes his head, and before he knows it they’re actually _talking_.  
  
“See,” Sirius says. “With a name like Remus I thought you’d secretly be a posh fuck like me.”  
  
Remus laughs. “My mum taught classics at the grammar school,” he says. “Think she mostly chose the name to piss off my dad, who wanted to call me John. She said that she was doing the work so she got to pick the name.”  
  
“Seeing them later?” Sirius says.  
  
“They’re dead,” Remus says, and he downs the dregs from his mug and does his best not to gag.  
  
“Sorry,” Sirius says.  
  
“You didn’t do anything,” Remus says. He yawns. His throat is still burning.  
  
“So that’s why I thought you’d gone to university,” Sirius says, still doggedly trying to apologise for a half-forgotten slight.  
  
Remus waves a hand in the air. “I wanted to when I was a kid,” he says. “I was too ill to finish school and when I was eighteen I got a job here.”  
  
“How old are you?” Sirius says. That’s another thing. That’s another reason why. He looks so fucking young. All of his clothes look new. Remus looks at himself some mornings and he realises that everything he owns has turned grey.  
  
“How old are you,” Remus says. “Twenty-one?”  
  
“Twenty-three,” Sirius says, and bares his teeth in a not-quite smile. “Took a few years out to find myself.”  
  
“And where were you?”  
  
“Half-drowned in the middle of the Cherwell,” Sirius says. “Not as bad as it sounds.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
They can leave at five -- well, Sirius was supposed to leave at one -- but they find themselves still there at half past, half-arguing, half-pouring their hearts out. “I can’t believe you’re so good at projecting this image,” Remus says, finally, and plucks at Sirius’s jumper between his finger and thumb.  
  
“What image?” Sirius says. “Twat?”  
  
“You’re so good at acting like a normal person,” Remus says, and he staggers to his feet. He finished his small amount of whisky hours ago but he can still feel it at the back of his head. “Right, come on, are you driving.”  
  
“I didn’t offer you a ride,” Sirius says, but then he laughs and leads Remus out, and even helps him fumble his way through locking up. Remus feels heavy-handed, and heavy-headed, every time he looks at Sirius or even remembers that he’s nearby.  
  
When they get outside, Sirius doesn’t go to the carpark -- it turns out what he actually has is a motorbike. A _motorbike_.  
  
“Oh my god, this is a terrible idea,” Remus says. “We’re going to be on the news because we died on Christmas day.”  
  
“No we won’t,” Sirius says. “I’m very responsible.”  
  
Remus groans, but finally decided to get onto the motorbike because it’s cold and he wants to be at home, not arguing with the stupid trainee. Sirius pulls his arms around his waist and says, “Tighter than that,” but he doesn’t start the engine.  
  
“What do you mean, I’m good at acting like a normal person?” he asks. Remus pulls away.  
  
“You’re a Tory,” he says. “Right?”  
  
Sirius claps his hands together. He’s wearing leather gloves. They’re thick, and textured, and Remus hates them because they look so -- _nice_. They’re _apparel_. “What makes you say that?” he says.  
  
Remus swings his arms around Sirius’s waist again, and grits his teeth. “It’s Christmas,” he says. “I want to go home.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Sirius knows where Remus lives without being asked. He pulls in in front of the house and cocks his head to one side as Remus takes off his helmet. “I’m not a Tory,” he says. “I’m sorry if you think I’ve been operating under false pretences.” Remus rummages around in his coat pocket for his keys and rolls his eyes, but he can’t stop himself from inviting him in.  
  
He’s aware of how small and grotty the flat is, and he feels like he’s daring Sirius to mention it, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, Sirius takes the armchair that’s a weird shade of yellow and has the grace to look happy about it.  
  
“I’ve got some Belgian beer,” Remus says. A case of it. It’s all there really is in the fridge, apart from half a cabbage and some wizened carrots. “Lily brought it back from her last trip.” It’s strong, and dark, and it beats the supermarket whisky Sirius brought along in his briefcase.  
  
He takes them both a bottle and collapses onto the sofa, which collapses in turn, but it’s better than sitting on the floor. “So, what?” he says. “Are you a Marxist? Leveller? Social Democrat?”  
  
“Marx-agnostic, think I prefer the Luddites...” Sirius says, and then waggles his hand in the air. “Think I’m Social Democrat-agnostic too. They seem like nice lads, don’t they.”  
  
Remus takes a long gasp of his beer. “Why do you wear cravats,” he says.  
  
“I don’t wear _cravats_ ,” Sirius says. “I don’t own a cravat.” He flexes his fingers. “Sometimes in the morning I’m sort of clumsy so I don’t manage to do my ties up properly. I’m not used to getting up so early.”  
  
He pauses. “Is that why you were so horrible to me?”

“Tough,” Remus says, half-mumbling into his beer. “I was tough,” he says. “Not horrible.”  
  
“Because I was a Tory,” Sirius says, wondering. “That’s the first time that’s happened to me.”  
  
Remus feels like his body has turned to rock. Like he can’t move. “Lily...” he says. “Lily was my first best friend. At school I was really sick, and then I started at the paper, and a year later...”  
  
Sirius looks away. “I still haven’t met Lily,” he says.  
  
“Then her boyfriend, James -- you know James -- got a job here from Lancaster,” Remus says. “But she’s got her travel job now, and James will look for a deputy editor role somewhere bigger -- one of the Manchester papers, maybe.”  
  
“James said he invited you to theirs for Christmas dinner,” Sirius says, and Remus feels angry, as if James had any right to --  
  
“Peter is going to be here forever,” Remus says, desperately, trying to explain something that he doesn’t actually want to say out loud. “And I don’t even like him that much.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
When Remus was eighteen, he took his driving test and failed. When he was nineteen, he took it twice, and he failed it both times, but he _almost_ passed the second time.  
  
When he was twenty, he took it again, but the examiner had pulled the wheel away from him at the wrong moment and the car had crashed and Remus had walked away with a fractured collarbone, a shattered elbow, and cuts down the left side of his face that had left scars.  
  
But at least he’d walked away from it, and he’d kept on walking.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“I feel like we started this all wrong,” Sirius says. It’s hours later and they’re both on the collapsed sofa, and the radio is playing novelty Christmas music and the odd Ella Fitzgerald and Shangri-Las song to make up for it.  
  
Remus looks at him.  
  
“I should have said hi, and I should have said the Telegraph sent me but fuck the Telegraph, and then we’d be friends.”  
  
“I don’t need any more friends,” Remus says. “I have Lily, and James, and Peter...”  
  
“I should have said, I’m a new reporter, I’m from Sheffield too...”  
  
“Don’t insult me by mimicking my accent.”  
  
“I should have swept you off your feet before you’d even heard me speak,” Sirius says. “You’d have liked me then.” Remus scowls and leans away from him. He hasn’t drawn the curtains yet and he realises that it’s started to snow outside, but he’s too tired and heavy-limbed to get up and look.  
  
“I should have hit you over the head and had done with it...”  
  
“That one’s not acceptable,” Remus says, and stretches out again. “Stop being a bigot.”  
  
“I’m not being a bigot,” Sirius says. “I want to hit you over the head because you’re annoying, not because you’re beneath me.” He leers, slightly, but not in a threatening way.  
  
“No, I mean,” Remus says, and he puts on his best Sirius-voice and says, “‘ _Queerest_ night of my life’. It’s things like that.”  
  
“Oh, but it’s fine for you to do _my_ voice,” Sirius says, but he says it quietly. He puts his head to one side and considers Remus, thoughtfully. Remus flushes, and turns away.  
  
“I’m not being a bigot,” Sirius repeats, meaningfully, but Remus won’t look at him, and his eyelids are heavy, and his body feels like it’s stinging all over, and he feels short of breath, and he’s tired and he’s scared, and then it’s suddenly morning, and he’s on his sofa, a blanket on top of him, and he’s alone.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Remus is getting dressed when Sirius emerges from his bathroom, and Remus yelps and tries to hide, even though he’s got trousers and a vest on already and his shirt is half-buttoned up. “At least we’re not working today,” Sirius says, smugly, and he makes a big show of covering his eyes with both hands until Remus tells him to knock it off, he’s dressed.  
  
Neither of them fancies the cabbage or carrots for breakfast, or the mouldy bread that Sirius unearths in the back of one of Remus’s cupboards, so they brave the outside in search of breakfast or lunch or anything edible, anywhere in the reachable world. The snow settled overnight, so they don’t drive, they just walk -- clutching each other every time the pavement feels slippery beneath their feet.  
  
“You never get snow like this in London,” Sirius says, wistfully. They don’t usually get snow like this here, Remus wants to point out, but he doesn’t. It’s so -- quiet.  
  
They end up at -- “Are you joking,” Sirius says -- The Worker’s Cafe. Remus orders a big English breakfast with some extra hash browns for both of them.  
  
Sirius leans across the table and talks to Remus in a low voice as they’re waiting for the food to come. Remus stirs his coffee happily. “You need to listen to me this time, because I have the horrible feeling that you fell asleep while I was trying to explain things to you last night.”  
  
“It was late,” Remus says.  
  
“I’m gay,” Sirius says. “I’m not a bigot.”  
  
Remus presses a hand to his forehead. “You’re -- what?” he says.  
  
“ _Now_ who looks like the bigot,” Sirius says.  
  
“Stop using that word,” Remus says. He closes his eyes for a second and then opens them again. “This is a lot to take in before I’ve eaten anything.”  
  
“Everyone at Oxford could tell I was gay,” Sirius says. “You just thought I was posh?”  
  
“Apparently,” Remus says, bordering on mild hysteria. Things start to slot into place. Maybe this is why Sirius had tried so hard to be friends. Maybe nobody has shown him around yet. _Properly_. “I can take you to a gay pub if you want but the music is _terrible_.”  
  
“Are you asking me out?” Sirius says, and Remus says “NO!” and then the food comes, which is best for everyone involved, really.  
  
Sirius leaves his hash browns, baked beans, and half of his bacon. Remus’s stomach churns. When Sirius tries to pay for the food -- all of it -- he insists on splitting the bill instead.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
When they leave, the snow has started to rapidly descend into slush, and Remus wishes they had the motorbike so that they didn’t feel obliged to talk. “I’m sorry I called you a bigot,” he says, finally, because of -- well, the said obligation to talk.  
  
Sirius gives him a small, lopsided smile. “It’s an easy mistake,” he says. “Apparently.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Sirius goes home, and Remus lets himself into his flat and stares at the debris on the floor. Empty beer bottles, the last third of a bottle of whisky that he’s never going to drink, and -- actually, that’s mostly it. He has a vague memory of eating an actual meal last night but he has no idea how Sirius got hold of it. The plates and cutlery, at least, are washed up and drying on the draining board.  
  
He stares out of the kitchen window. It’s started to snow again. Fat, white flakes. It’s as if the sky knows that yesterday was Christmas, and that winter always feels hollow when it’s over, and is trying to fill it up as best it can.  
  
That afternoon he remembers that Lily and James gave him a present, and he unearths it from the top of his wardrobe. Peter’s present is there, too, and his secret santa gift from work. James and Lily have bought him a walkman and some tapes that they’d clearly sent for from ads at the back of the NME -- he stares at the tracklistings and smiles, but he leaves the walkman in its box for now -- and Peter has bought him socks. He bought socks for Peter, too. He puts a pair of them straight on. They’re thick, and he feels a wave of gratitude despite himself.  
  
The secret santa gift is -- he can’t work out what it is, but it definitely cost more than the £2 limit. He turns it over in his hands. It’s big and heavy. It looks like a giant calculator. He puts it down and finally braces himself to call Lily and thank her for the gift, instead.  
  
“Did you have a good Christmas?” she says, slightly sly. As if she knows something she’s not telling him.  
  
“Nothing burnt down,” he says, wrapping the phone cord around his knuckles. “So, yeah?”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
He’s back at work the next day, and so is Sirius. He’s started to get the hang of writing articles, so Remus makes him focus on shorthand. One day, James starts sending Sirius out on his own jobs -- they’re always spread thinly around Christmas and new year -- and neither of them complains.  
  
On New Year’s Eve, late afternoon, it’s just them, Rita at the subs desk, and a handful of printers in the office, because everyone else has begged off early. Sirius looks slightly hopefully at Remus when he says, “What are you doing tonight?”  
  
“Nothing,” he says.  
  
Remus pulls a pad of post-its towards him and scribbles an address down. He peels it off the stack and sticks it onto Sirius’s jumper. “The pub,” he says, indicating to it with his pen.  
  
Sirius looks down at his own chest, but he doesn’t peel it off. “Are you going?” he says.  
  
Remus bites at his thumbnail. “I don’t know,” he says, finally. “They play shit music but at least they all dance at midnight.”  
  
Of course, it’s then that they get the call. There’s been a break-in at the offices of the firm behind the successful bid to build new trams across Sheffield, and if they hurry they might be able to get there to see the scene before the police do.  
  
“One of us should stay here,” Remus says.  
  
“Rita can take any calls,” Sirius says, pulling his blazer on over his jumper. “Come on, you need me to drive and I need you to ask the difficult questions.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
They don’t quite play good-cop, bad-cop, but it’s in the same ballpark. Sirius even pulls a camera out from his satchel and manages to get a few shots before the policeman who turned up about three minutes after them starts menacing in his direction. “Okay,” he says, hands up. “I’m putting it away.”  
  
Remus finds him outside, smoking, about fifteen minutes later. “I thought you didn’t,” he says. He waves the smoke away. Sirius frowns and stubs the cigarette out on the frosted-over iron railings behind him. The embers hiss.  
  
“I don’t like to smoke in the office,” he says. “Trying to cut down.” Remus nods. There’s a hole in one of his boots, and the sky feels damp. He looks up, and squints with one eye at the clouds.  
  
Remus is writing the break-in up for the next edition of the paper -- it wasn’t a big enough deal to phone up James and consider stopping the press, especially since the printers are here to try and fix something over the bank holiday -- and Sirius emerges smugly from the dark-room, clutching some prints.  
  
Remus paws through them. Decent enough photos, but as crime scenes go it’s not that exciting. “I think James might try and get us to go with some of the pictures they used with the bid for the trams,” he says. “Mock-ups, maps, whatever.” He drums his fingers on the table. “Give me that one, though.” He paperclips it to the copy.  
  
“This is why,” Sirius says.  
  
“What?” Remus says.  
  
“You asked me, days ago,” Sirius says. “Why I wanted to be a journalist. I didn’t get to finish my story.”  
  
“You liked going undercover at a ball,” Remus says. “You had a gay old time.”  
  
“No,” Sirius says. He touches Remus’s arm. “After we published the article about Oriel, they had to conduct everything much more -- openly. They voted to accept women as students.”  
  
Remus snorts. “If I was a woman, I wouldn’t want to join some horrible old boys’ club.”  
  
“It means,” Sirius says. “We made Oxford a slightly better place.”  
  
“You think this is going to improve Sheffield?” Remus says.  
  
“Not this story on its own,” Sirius says. “But I bet there’s a connection between this and some of the deals that have been going on in the background. Did you see what they’d taken? There wasn’t any money there.”  
  
Remus laughs. “I’m here to train you to write in language that children can read,” he says. “Not to investigate anything like this.”  
  
It’s pitch-black outside, and it’s cold inside the office.  
  
“Lift?” Sirius says, finally. Remus inclines his head. Yes.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
Remus swings off the bike in front of his flat and gives Sirius the helmet, but Sirius doesn’t drive off straight away. He grabs Remus’s sleeve and looks up at him. He’s flipped the engine off.  
  
“Bet you’ll be glad when they build the trams,” he says. “You won’t need to accept any more lifts from people like me.”  
  
“Sirius,” Remus says. “I don’t mean this in a rude way, but in my life there isn’t anyone else _like you_.”  
  
He _does_ actually mean it to sound rude, but it comes out more -- fond. Ugh. Sirius’s face breaks open into a smile. He doesn’t let go of Remus even when he tries to move away.  
  
“Remus,” Sirius says. He uses his free hand to pull the post-it note out of his jacket pocket. “Remus, I don’t want to go out to a pub where I don’t know anyone tonight.”  
  
“Well, sorry,” Remus says. “I don’t have much else to offer.”  
  
Sirius laughs. “You’re such a stupid fuck,” he says, and he grabs Remus with his other arm too, and kisses him.  
  
Remus kisses Sirius back. “What was that for,” he says, when he pulls away, but he’s holding onto Sirius now. He presses his lips together.  
  
“Do you still have my whisky,” Sirius says. He presses a kiss to Remus’s jaw, just next to his mouth, pulling Remus towards him. Then he gets off the motorbike.  
  
“Fuck your whisky,” Remus says, when he can make his mouth form words again. His fingers are numb from the cold. “Let’s go to the pub _together_ , then.” He feels -- sick? Lightheaded?  
  
“Fine,” Sirius says. “But you’ll have to take me home later. I need to show you how to use your Christmas gift.”  
  
“What?” Remus says. Did -- what?  
  
“Nothing weird,” Sirius says. “The _Tandy_. It’s a computer for typing on, instead of a typewriter. They all just got them at the Telegraph.”  
  
Remus scrunches up his face. Has literally anything he’s said made it sound like he wants anything to do with _The Telegraph_.  
  
“This had better not just be some kind of weird pity date,” Remus says as they clatter back onto the bike. Sirius feels very warm, even through the leather jacket and monstrous jumper beneath. “Remember, you have to see me in the office for the next four-and-a-half-months. I can be horrible if I don’t like you.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Sirius says. “Come on, you’ve got to tell me the way there.”  
  
And he does.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
It turns out that Remus does like the trams. Not because he doesn’t have to accept lifts from Sirius on his motorbike anymore -- he can like both methods of transport, he’s a grown, complex man -- but just because he _likes_ them. He likes the rails. He especially likes riding them in winter, when the sky is pitch black, clear and full of a handful of stars, and it’s like the world is just -- the stars, the rails ahead, sometimes snow, and him, and he’s emitting light, and warmth, but not too much. Enough.  
  
But that’s all further ahead.  
  
  
\---  
  
  
“Fuck The Telegraph,” Sirius says, cheerily, on a rainy day at the end of March. He’s sitting in James’s new office, which is basically a cupboard that’s still covered in Christmas decorations that Albus had put up at the beginning of November.  
  
“Have you told them that?” Remus says. He’s leaning on James’s desk.  
  
Sirius shrugs. “Depends,” he says.  
  
“On what terms,” James says.  
  
“You’ve got to actually offer me a proper job,” Sirius says, and then he smirks. “And next time, you’ve got to let me write the story if I dig it up.”  
  
“Fine,” James says. “Get out of my office. I need to redecorate.”  
  
  
\---  
  
  
It doesn’t snow on Christmas the next year, either. But it snows on New Year’s Eve, and Sirius compiles readers’ photos for a centrefold spread, and Remus laughs at him, and they drink some good whisky from their coffee mugs and they draw whiskers on Peter’s staff photo on the wall in gold pen, and antlers on James’s, and Sirius kisses Remus in the newsroom -- it’s only Rita here, who cares, Sirius says -- and Sirius slips a cold hand under Remus’s shirt, and Remus yelps, and the next day everyone in the office knows -- even Filch, who scowls every time Remus tries to talk to him -- and Remus can’t bring himself to care at all.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> my parents are both newspaper journalists and i spent a while asking my mum about what it was like in the early 80s, which is when this is loosely set. mum, i hope you're not actually reading this, but thank you! 
> 
> and please forgive me for taking a lot of liberties with the actual... history.
> 
> the title is from a 1981 album by josef k that i imagine james and lily might have given remus for christmas. too gloomy for them, but perfect for him.
> 
> if you want to yell at me or whatever i'm on tumblr [here](http://alwaysalreadyangry.tumblr.com/).


End file.
